Ttyjfyk

On OS X, system_profiler SPHardwareDataType outputs:

Hardware Overview:

 Model Name: MacBook Pro
 Total Number of Cores: 4
 L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
 L3 Cache: 8 MB
 Memory: 8 GB

I want to get the Memory value, trimmed of whitespaces.

This is what I had:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | grep --color=never -E '^ +Memory: ' | cut -d ':' -f 2

Not ok. It keeps the whitespace.

I switched to this:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | perl -ne 'if(/^ +Memory: (.*)$/)print $1;'

and I'd like to ask:

• Could this be made more concise in Perl?

The braces annoy me, often I type them wrong. Having to put the condition in () is also bothersome. The semicolon is bothersome.

• Could this be made as concisely using more basic UNIX tools? (grep/sed/awk)?

Note: I do not use this line I like..

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | sed -Ene 's/^ +Memory: (.*)$/1/g p'

because extended regexes (-E are -r on some platforms? possible?) and fundamentally because, although I understand that sed works on lines, -n suppresses output unless I explicitly p print it, s//g is a normal regex substitute.. and that commands following a match are only executed on matching lines.. I am puzzled by the fact that s//g in reality is an action in itself.. so I would expect p to require a ; before it.. odd that you can both replace and use the match as a condition to execute the comand.. is that line correct at all?

Awk would make it most consise:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | awk -F': ' '/Memory:/print $2'

This is all you really need for the Perl one:

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | perl -nle '/ry:s*(.*)/ && print $1'

Some other choices:

• 
  

  system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | /bin/grep Me | gawk 'print $2,$3'

  
  
  

  Using /bin/grep eliminates the need for --color=never. grep is defined as an alias to grep --color=auto in /etc/bash.bashrc (at least it is on most Linux distros and, I guess, on OSX).

  
  


• 
  

  system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | /bin/grep Me | /bin/egrep -o '[1-9]+.+'

  
  
  

  The -o causes grep toprint only the matched characters.

  
  



• system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | tail -n 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 4,5




• system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | tail -n 1 | sed 's/.*: //g'

system_profiler SPHardwareDataType | sed -n 's/^ *Memory: //p'

p here is a flag to the s command (like g), not the p command, and means print the pattern space if the substitution takes place. You don't need g here, since the pattern can only match once.